Activist says immigrants should follow rules

Jul. 7, 2013
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Luis Pozzolo, an American citizen who emigrated from Uruguay about 10 years ago, sits on his front porch in Lexington, Ky., on June 25, 2013. Pozzolo is the head of America for Lawful Immigration Solutions Today, or ALIST, which is a group opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants. / Luke Sharrett, The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal

by Joseph Gerth, The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal

by Joseph Gerth, The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Luis Pozzolo came to the U.S. nine years ago to escape economic oppression.

A banker with a job in the Uruguayan federal government and the scion of a powerful family, his political party had lost power and his chance at promotion was gone.

So with $300 in his pocket, he came to the United States and sought political asylum with the hope of starting anew.

Now a U.S. citizen, he wants others entering the country to follow legal paths, just as he did.

He has founded two groups that favor immigration changes but oppose any new law that would provide an easier path to citizenship for those who aren't here legally. And his message is finding adherents in Kentucky among the tea party and other conservative groups with whom he has spoken since becoming active on immigration issues after becoming a U.S. citizen in October.

Terry Donoghue, a founder of the Boone County Tea Party and Northern Kentucky Tea Party, said Pozzolo has been very well received by conservative groups there. "He's very knowledgeable and people understand that he has a passion for the illegal immigration issue."

The fact that he is Latino and has gone through the immigration and citizenship processes give him more credibility, he added.

"Luis knows firsthand what it takes to become an American citizen," Donoghue said. "It's not often you have a person of his stature who went through the process legally and who gets upset at how easy the government is making it for (undocumented immigrants) to become citizens."

The Rev. Patrick Delahanty, director of the Catholic Conference of Kentucky and a former director of Catholic Charities, which helps to relocate refugees and immigrants, said Pozzolo is a classic example of the "drawbridge effect." That's when immigrants essentially want to pull up a metaphorical drawbridge behind them, keeping others out.

Pozzolo denies that. "I'm not pulling the bridge," he said. "What I'm doing, I open the door to the right people, I'm closing the door to the wrong people."

A senator's son

Pozzolo, 41, came to the United States after the death of his father, also named Luis Pozzolo.

The elder Pozzolo was a senator in Uruguay and a member of the conservative Colorado Party. But he died in 2003 and shortly after, the Colorado and National parties lost control to the Broad Front, a coalition of left-wing and socialist groups.

Pozzolo, now a Republican, said he sought political asylum in the United States because Uruguay's government was making it difficult for him to travel and his job was a dead end because of his party affiliation and well-known father.

"I didn't have a chance to get a promotion because I wasn't part of the union," he said. "The union didn't want me to be one of the members because my father was one of the main senators."

Pozzolo said others who want entry into the United States should follow established procedures - and it shouldn't be easy.

"The process is a long process, but you can't become a citizen of a country in two days," said Pozzolo, who is a supervisor for a contractor at the Toyota plant in Georgetown, Ky. "I think you need to learn how that country operates and you need to learn how to love the new country."

One group he has formed - America for Lawful Immigration Solutions Today, or ALIST - is made up largely of Kentuckians. He says it has 300 or 400 members. His other organization, he said, is more of a national group called Alliance for Immigration Justice that is made up of about 500 people who have immigrated legally. Both groups organize opposition to open borders and lobby for tough immigration laws.

Pozzollo said he believes immigration changes shouldn't involve building a fence along the U.S. Southern border. "You are not going to secure the border building fences," he said. "You're just giving them more fence to jump."

Instead, he prefers laws prohibiting people from hiring workers who have come here illegally or overstayed their visas. Then, he said, those here illegally will leave on their own.

Pozzolo also wants people who come to the U.S. seeking low-skilled jobs on work visas to stay in those jobs and not seek higher-paying ones. Doing so, he said, takes jobs from Americans and frees up the lower-skilled jobs for illegal workers.

And he wants to end federal and state programs that support those in the country illegally and end the granting of citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born on U.S. soil. He said that gives pregnant women more reason to sneak into the country or stay beyond their visas.

He wants an effective employment verification program and argues that his approach would stop abuse of Latino workers who have no power to stand up to their bosses.

At odds with Ky.'s senators

Delahanty said he met Pozzolo at a meeting arranged by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to discuss immigration issues as the U.S. Senate moved toward debating the immigration reform bill and found him to be passionate but somewhat unrealistic in his goals.

"If he's trying to get rid of 11 million people (who aren't in the country legally), he's Don Quixote," Delahanty said.

But Pozzolo insists that the country's immigration system should be one of "selection" rather than an open-door policy.

He rails against the immigration bill that recently passed the U.S. Senate not only because it provides benefits for undocumented immigrants but because he says it triples the number of legal immigrants admitted to the U.S. each year.

Despite being a Republican, Pozzolo said he hasn't made friends with Kentucky's U.S. senators. He said that Paul and Sen. Mitch McConnell didn't do enough to stop the immigration reform package that cleared the Senate last month.

He added that both are working too closely with those who want a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and only voted against the bipartisan Senate plan at the end.

He said he has been blocked by building managers from entering McConnell's Lexington office to deliver a petition on immigration and complains that when Paul held a meeting with a handful of constituents on an immigration overhaul, the senator sandbagged him by inviting several people who favored more lenient rules.

Terry Carmack, McConnell's state director, said that the petitions were received by the Lexington office from someone in Pozzolo's organization and that they were sent to McConnell in Washington. He declined to comment further.

Delahanty said that while Pozzolo was the most hard-line anti-immigration activist at the meeting organized by Paul, the meeting was meant to give Paul information about different positions on immigration reform.

Jim Milliman, Paul's state director, said the meeting was simply a round-table discussion that involved people from religious organizations, agriculture, business, civic officials and immigrants and was intended to bring all perspectives out.